The kind of person who lights candles - Lorena Santos

 

I am the kind of person who lights candles. This is now, not then. it is a recently acquired habit, one that has done me well. I light up candles every day. In the beginning of each class I set up an intention, I focus and I light the candle. I ask myself to be the light, to be the container, not the conduit. I am now the kind of person Who walks barefoot on the grass of my backyard and lets herself shower in the improbable rain of Brasilia in May.

The four elements rest now on my desk making my therapist smile when told about them, making her proud of myself and my journey. I am the kind of person that feels the connection with the elements, and nature and the universe, so new. I am again a newborn being. And it is not the first time, I have once died and it’s no secret. This time, however, I did not have to die. I had only to shed the old skin, the one who served me no more.

I am still the kind of person who looks in the mirror and who wonders who this new being is. This new self who looks a bit hippie to my old skeptical, cynical one. My old self looks at this new one in wonder. This new me that I am came in peace. It did not come trough death, it came from love, life and acceptance. This new me embraces the old one who feels in return its truth, its permanence. I am now the kind of person who misses the chiming to hold space for other voices so much that has incorporated that to other rituals of her work. The person that I am now is the kind of person that insists with her family members that they try presuming good will and that they look for what is strong, what stays and what works in life and people, instead of what is wrong.

In less than one year I have changed in so many ways. Perhaps the ground for this change has been prepared through each small step taken in the last decade of my life. Perhaps I had the best midlife crisis ever, the one which paved the way for my new being: the kind of person I am now. This person I am now, this woman, has found the magic in the shape of a flowing circle, has learned to accept, respect and love the woman she is, and is happy to have so many other women she can now call sisters.